Oracle's Moon er-4 Read online

  Grace envied Max for a lot of reasons today.

  She put away the groceries that needed to go in the fridge then stood for a few minutes with the door open, relishing the frigid air. She poured herself a glass of cold water, swallowed prescription-strength ibuprofen and limped to the living room. After locking the screen door, she left the front door propped open in the hope of catching wayward breeze.

  Next she checked on Max. The little man was still sawing logs, a chubby fist held over one closed eye. Now that was an intense nap. She gathered up his lumpy nine-month-old body. He seemed heavier when he was a dead weight. She took him into the children’s bedroom and eased him into his crib. He didn’t even stir to roll over.

  All her immediate tasks were done. She made her slow, tired way back to the living room and sat on the couch with a grunt.

  Her gaze fell on the textbooks she had left stacked on the coffee table.

  She hadn’t felt ready to go to college directly out of high school. Instead, she had kicked around for a year, dated a few guys and driven across the country with her friend Jacqui so they could dip their big toes in the Pacific Ocean. Then they had driven home again, and Grace had worked in restaurants and saved a little money. She had started college a year late, and as a result, she still hadn’t finished.

  This past spring was supposed to be her final semester. Petra, Niko and Grace had been happy when they had gone out to eat that rainy Friday night. Grace’s spring break had just begun, and Niko had found out he had gotten a raise at work.

  All it had taken to smash their lives apart was one independent trucker who had fallen asleep at the wheel and crossed over the median line into oncoming traffic. The accident killed Petra and Niko, and it had nearly killed Grace as well. If Chloe and Max had been in the car as originally planned, the last of the Andreas family could well have been wiped out in one freak crash, but Petra had decided she wanted dinner out without the children, so at the last minute she had arranged for a babysitter.

  Grace didn’t remember the collision. She was glad. She didn’t want to remember.

  When she had awakened in the hospital, she had been disoriented and groggy with painkillers. Even so, she had felt it immediately, that old Power nestling deep inside of her, and it was one of those things that you can’t unlearn once you know it. She knew her sister was dead and nothing would ever be the same again.

  Now she had five incompletes from very understanding professors, no Bachelor’s degree and a load of student debt that would come crashing down on her shoulders at some point in the near future. She had accumulated a monstrous pile of bills from multiple surgeries on her knee, along with a hospital stay, a tangle of car and life insurance policies but no health insurance coverage, and she had received nothing at all from the dead trucker who had let his insurance coverage lapse. No matter how she wrangled the numbers, the assets she had were nowhere near enough to cover all the bills.

  Somehow she had to create a life for herself and the kids. She had to try to finish those classes, get her degree and find a paying job that would cover both living and childcare expenses. And no matter how much she resisted the idea, it was becoming clear she was going to have to file for bankruptcy. Maybe she could qualify for a waiver for the court fees.

  “Got everything you need, baby girl?” she mumbled to Chloe.

  “Uh-huh,” Chloe said, her blue eyes glued to the television.

  Sorry, Petra and Niko, she thought. I know you didn’t like using the TV as a babysitter, and I try, I really do. But my gods, I can’t keep my eyes open any longer.

  She eased her sore body flat and fell into a black hole.

  2

  Grace dreamed she was running along a dark paved road. The night was full of shadows, the new moon hidden from the naked eye. The full moon at its zenith was a witch’s moon, a time for incantations and Power. The new moon at its darkest was the Oracle’s moon, a time when the veil between all the worlds and all the times thinned. A brilliant spray of stars like Djinns’ eyes pierced the dark purple sky, and the wind whispered secrets to the shadowed, swaying trees.

  Her running shoes slapped the ground rhythmically. They struck a pagan tempo for the song in her coursing blood. She loved how her body felt, sleek and strong as it moved along the paved road. Perfect. She felt perfect.

  A gigantic black panther ran along beside her. His broad shoulder was as high as hers, and his long, powerful body ate the distance with effortless, fluid grace. As soon as she became aware of him, the panther turned his head and looked at her with diamond eyes that were as piercing and shining as the stars. Shocked, she jerked and stumbled.…

  And she slipped into another dream. This time she climbed the side of a steep rocky bluff. She had to use her hands, and the burn in her muscles felt good. The sun was perched high in the sky and beat down on her head, and she dripped with sweat.

  An immense black dog climbed at her side. He was easily twice the size of a mastiff, all muscle and power, yet he climbed up the side of the bluff with impossible agility. As she stared, he turned to look at her with radiant diamond eyes that startled her so badly, she lost her grip on the rocks.

  Gravity yanked. She fell, and the ground hurtled toward her.

  She woke with a start, her heart hammering. Her clothes were clammy with sweat. The sun had shifted, and she was alone in the living room. The television was off. So many things were not right with the scene, but before she had a chance to panic, she heard Max and Chloe giggling in their bedroom.

  “I want you to be a doggie now,” Chloe said.

  A male voice said, “But at the moment I am a cat.”

  Grace knew that voice. She had only heard it for a brief time, but she would never forget it. It was the voice of the Bane of Her Existence. It sounded deep and clear, with a kind of purity that somehow hurt the heart, and it held the power of a cyclone.

  It belonged to a creature whose whirlwind arrival on her doorstep had heralded confrontation and violence.

  And the killing.

  And it was visiting with her kids.

  She was off the couch and moving down the hall before she fully knew what she was doing.

  Chloe said, “I want to ride the doggie!”

  “I believe what you want would then be called a horse,” said the Bane.

  Max shrieked, a happy sound that escalated so high it could shatter glass.

  Sharp pain shot up her leg. Just as it threatened to give out from underneath her, she reached the children’s bedroom and grabbed on to the doorway as she looked inside.

  Max stood in his crib. He couldn’t walk on his own yet, but he could stand when he held on to something. The single wisp of dark brown hair at the top of his head waved as he bobbed up and down. He was grinning from ear to ear and watching Chloe, who sat on the floor along with a black cat, who sat in front of her.

  The cat had to be the Bane of Her Existence. The Djinn. Khalil Somebody Important. Visually, it looked like a normal, fairly large cat, perhaps twenty pounds or so, but to her mind’s eye, it felt immense with a shadowy, hazardous Power.

  The cat said, “For something so small, you emit a great deal of noise.”

  Chloe grabbed the cat’s tail and yanked on it. “Doggie!” Chloe shrieked. “Doggie! Doggie!”

  “That is my tail,” the cat remarked. The little girl stabbed at his furred face with a plump finger. “Now you have discovered one of my eyes. Oh look, you have discovered the other one. I think you have awakened your aunt. I told you we should be quiet.”

  The trio turned to look at her as she stood frozen. Two delighted children and what appeared to be a normal black cat but was instead an alien, enormously Powerful, infinitely dangerous creature.

  “Look, Gracie!” said Chloe. “It’s the doggie-cat! You said we can keep him.”

  The cat’s strange, wrong eyes narrowed. “Did you?” he said. His triangular face looked distinctly unfriendly, whiskers held awry. “That wasn’t what you told me earlier.
”

  Grace lunged forward to snatch up the cat, and he allowed it. His body hung boneless from her grip just like a real cat would. “I had no idea you meant this doggie-cat, Chloe,” she said, her voice hoarse. “That changes everything.”

  “Which other doggie-cat could she possibly have meant?” said the cat. “You don’t exactly have a plethora of them hanging around.”

  Grace growled to Chloe, “Stay here.”

  Chloe pushed to her feet and whined, “But I want to play with him.”

  Grace looked at the little girl. “I said stay here, young lady.”

  Something in Grace’s expression must have made it clear she meant business, because Chloe kicked her toys on the floor. “You never let me do anything fun. I’m never going to live here again.”

  “Fine,” Grace said between her teeth. “Just do as you’re told.”

  She limped out of the bedroom. Max gave a wordless yell, clearly displeased at recent events. Chloe shouted, “Horrible! He’s MY doggie-cat! I found him first. You’re not fair! I hate everything and everybody!”

  Grace hissed at him. “Thank you. Thank you so much for that. There are so many things wrong with what just happened. What the hell is the matter with you, anyway? Have you got no sense?”

  “You are every bit as impudent and disrespectful as you were earlier this morning,” he said in a cold voice.

  The cat grew as she walked down the hall, until suddenly she held on to a weight that was much too heavy for her to carry. She dropped him, and he continued to grow until he became the massive black panther from her dream. A thrill of shock iced her skin. Her gaze slid sideways to look at the impossible behemoth slinking along beside her. He was the size of a large pony, yet he still seemed small compared to what her mind insisted was the immensity of his true presence.

  She would not give in to what she was feeling. She would not.

  “Stop it,” she snapped.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said the monstrous feline. He turned his head to look at her with bizarre eyes that sparkled with malice.

  They reached the living room. Grace rounded on him. She used her fury to propel her forward. She shoved at the giant creature. It was like trying to push a mountain. She shoved at him again. “You’re trying to intimidate me. Well, guess what, asshole? It isn’t going to work. This is my home. Those two kids are my niece and nephew. And I did not give you permission to spend time with them. You are trespassing, and it is not okay.”

  The giant panther morphed into the upright figure of an angry man, and finally she came face-to-face with the Djinn she had met when he and his two companions had knocked on her door.

  The form he wore this time was tall, somewhere close to six and a half feet. Long, raven black hair was pulled back from an elegant, pale face. That face had all the same things that a human face had, two eyes, a nose and a mouth. It was even lean-jawed and handsome, yet somehow it was clearly not a human face. His strange eyes were the same in every form he chose to wear, crystalline and diamondlike. He had a lean, graceful frame that matched his face, and he wore a simple black tunic and trousers, and a fierce, regal pride.

  This, as much as anything, was his real physical form. At least it was his go-to form. At his essence, he was a spirit of magic and fire. No physical form could contain him in his entirety. His Power filled the house.

  My gods, there’s so much of him, she thought as she stared up at his sparkling, angry eyes. What a calamity he is. Standing in front of him, she felt absurdly young, very small and stupidly, excessively fascinated.

  “I offer you a gift beyond price, you foolish creature,” he said between his teeth. “And you throw it back in my face.”

  “What do you think you’re offering me?” she asked. “I wake up and I find you with my kids in their bedroom. And I’ll say this again: without my permission. Do you realize how offensive that is? Maybe you don’t. Maybe that’s something Djinn would do all the time. You know what, I don’t care. And I’m not even going to get into all the wrong lessons you were teaching them. Wait a minute, yes, I am. You were a talking cat with children who are much too young to differentiate between that and reality.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What nonsense are you spouting, human?”

  “What do you think is going to happen the next time Chloe sees a black cat?” Grace demanded. “Do you think she’s going to say to herself, oh this is not like the freaky black cat that talks to me and lets me yank its tail and poke it in the eye? No. Do you know what she’s going to try to do? She’s going to try to talk to it and pull its tail and maybe poke it in the eye. And you know what that cat is going to do—because it’s a real goddamn cat? It’s going to scratch her. It might bite her. Cat bites are filthy things. Usually the puncture wounds go deep, and they get infected. And then suddenly, I’ll be taking a confused, crying four-year-old girl to the ER for a three-hundred-dollar doctor’s visit to get antibiotics, all because of your ignorant arrogance!”

  He regarded her with a supercilious expression. “Do all your thoughts proceed in such a fashion?”

  “What are you talking about?” Grace blinked, thrown off balance. “Do my thoughts proceed where?”

  He gestured with a long hand. He made it look impossibly graceful. “To conclusions of disaster, of course. No doubt there will also be brain-eating parasites in the cat bite, or perhaps a troop of rabid monkeys will escape from a nearby zoo and cut a path directly for your house.”

  She stared. “You think I’m making this stuff up? That cat bite happened to me when I was little. I have the scars to prove it. Do you know what I caught Chloe trying to do yesterday? She was climbing on top of the kitchen table. She thought she could jump off and fly like Clark Kent, because we had just watched an old movie rerun with Christopher Reeve, and if Superman could fly, she thought she might be able to too. Maybe she wouldn’t have broken her leg if I hadn’t caught her, but she probably would have hurt herself somehow.”

  The curve of his elegant mouth turned cruel. He looked around the living room, his gaze cold and judgmental. “How unfortunate then for your children that you choose to nap in the daytime instead of watching out for them the way you should.”

  She flinched as if she’d been slapped, and she looked around the living room too. Her textbooks were stacked on the coffee table. Toys littered the floor. A basket of unfolded laundry sat on the floor by the armchair. Chloe had spilled some of her pretzels on the area rug in the living room then walked over them. Crumbs were everywhere.

  Grace thought of the tangle at the back of Chloe’s head that she still hadn’t brushed out. Embarrassment and fury clogged her throat so that she couldn’t speak. After a moment she managed to whisper between clenched teeth, “You have no idea what you’re talking about. You have no real understanding of me, my kids, or any of the issues we face. That lack of understanding alone makes you dangerous to us.”

  “How dare you?” He thrust his angry face close. “I would never cause harm to a child. The whole reason I stayed was to protect them!”

  His rage curled around her, manifesting as black smoke. She felt as though she stared into an inferno.

  She would not flinch. She would not.

  There was simply no point in trying to reason with him. They were too different from each other, and he was too arrogant to listen to anything she said. She dug down deep and found enough composure to say, “I get that you don’t mean us any harm. Thank you for staying this morning to make sure Chloe and Max were protected. If you don’t wish to petition for a consultation with the Oracle, I’m telling you now to leave my house.”

  He scowled and opened his mouth, clearly intending a scorching reply, but a small, sad voice beat him to it. Chloe said, “No more fighting. Don’t be mad anymore, okay?”

  Khalil’s diamond gaze flickered. He looked down, as Grace did, at Chloe’s worried face. Then Grace witnessed a remarkable thing, as his elegant, malicious expression gentled. He went down on
one knee so that he could come face-to-face with Chloe. The girl regarded him gravely. Something in Grace’s chest twisted. He was so enormous, and Chloe so tiny.

  “I will not be mad anymore,” Khalil said. He did something to throttle back the Power in his voice and spoke quietly.

  “Promise?” Chloe asked.

  His gaze slid sideways and up at Grace. He looked sour. Wow, Grace thought on a sudden spurt of hysteria, he really doesn’t want to give up on his grudge. But he wasn’t talking to Grace any longer. She raised her eyebrows and nodded toward Chloe, telling him with the silent gesture, you’re answering to her, not to me.

  His strange, unfriendly gaze pledged something to her, but she didn’t know how to read unspoken Djinn messages. With an air of decision, Khalil turned to Chloe. He said, “Yes, we both promise.”

  Wait, what? Grace straightened. She hadn’t given him permission to speak for her.

  “We will not fight anymore,” he continued. “It is too upsetting for small people.”

  Chloe said strongly, “It’s upsetting for big girls too.”

  “Indeed,” said Khalil. He held out his hand and Chloe put hers into it.

  Chloe was so small, Grace thought, biting her lip. So fragile, so precious. Grace held herself so tensely her muscles were starting to ache again.

  He brought the girl’s fingers to his lips and kissed them. Then he let her go and straightened to his full height before he vanished.

  Grace stared at Chloe, looking for some kind of reaction to his sudden disappearance. Other than wiggling the fingers Khalil had kissed and looking intensely thoughtful, the little girl didn’t appear to have much of one. Maybe Chloe was concentrating on trying to disappear too, and she was discovering that she couldn’t do that either.